Rebecca Walker Anderson

Rebecca Walker Anderson is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale's School of Communication Studies. Her research intersects performance, culture, and technology, focusing on digital archiving, culture jamming, and tourism as performative practices.

• B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies with emphasis in performance studies from the University of North Texas (1998, 2004)
• Ph.D. in Communication Studies with emphasis in performance studies from Louisiana State University (2011)

Dr. Walker's work explores how technology shapes cultural and communicative practices, particularly in digital archiving and performative methodologies. She is also engaged in feminist theory, visual rhetoric, and tourism as communication. Her published work includes analyses of flash mobs as resistance in the edited volume Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance (2017) and a forthcoming chapter on tourism as performance methodology.

Her research extends into creative practice through performances like Hardened, which reinterprets the Medusa myth to critique historical and contemporary anxieties around liberated women. She contributes to journals such as Text and Performance Quarterly and Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies.

As Director of Graduate Studies, she oversees academic programs and mentors students in Communication Studies, though no formal advisees are listed in the provided text. Her work integrates performance art with scholarly inquiry, emphasizing interdisciplinary approaches to cultural and technological intersections.